


You Got Me All Choked-Up

by Sugarcane_Moon



Category: Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator
Genre: Bad Puns, Canon Trans Character, Child Abuse, Childhood Trauma, Developing Relationship, Drinking, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Established Relationship, I have no idea where this is going, M/M, Other, Past Child Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Relationship, Psychological Trauma, Recovery, Slow Burn, lol sorry kid, take it or leave it i don't care
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-01-16
Packaged: 2019-03-04 13:44:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13365948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sugarcane_Moon/pseuds/Sugarcane_Moon
Summary: Justin has dreams. Bad, terrible dreams.Is it too late to hop on the dream daddy train?





	1. Opening

**Author's Note:**

> http://blueberryjellyontoastplease.tumblr.com/

Justin's lungs are burning.

He can't see past the tears in his eyes. They make things blurry.

_"C'mon, get up, do something!"_   His dad is yelling but he can't hear it. There's a ring in his ear. It's so loud it rattles his brain, so sharp it hurts.

_"Get up, damn you! Get up!"_

He can't get up. Won't get up. Can't. Won't. There are hands on his neck. Foreign, yet familiar, calloused and rough and tight as they cut off any hope he had at sweet, sweet air. Is his dad still yelling? Why does his chest hurt? His throat is clenching. Stinging. Yearning.

He struggles for a moment, shutting his eyes, struggling against the grip and the ringing and the darkness clouding his mind as he slips in and out of consciousness--

_"Be a fucking man, Justin! Get up! Get up!"_

Justin wakes up in a cold sweat.

He grips his neck, searching for hands to pry off, but there's nothing there. He feels a phantom burning in his chest. He looks around the room, frantic for a moment. He settles back down once he realizes where he is.  
  
He's home. He's home, in his bed, in a town far, far away from familiar yet foreign hands. 

Justin sits up. He tells himself it was just a dream. It didn't happen. Never happened. Didn't happen. Never happened. He starts to search for his glasses on the nightstand, knocking over a glass of untouched water in the process. "Shit," he mutters as he bends over to pick up the glass-- it seemed so much  _heavier_ than before in his shaking hand-- and dropped it immediately. It shattered against the carpet. Glass splinters littered the ground like tiny diamonds. "Shit, shit, shit!" Justin cursed. He bent over to pick up the pieces, one by one, into his hand. He cut his finger on one of them. He got up, leaving the rest of the mess behind, and went to the bathroom.   
  
Downstairs, Amanda was sitting idly at the table. She looked up at him. She smiled. "I heard you crying last night."  
  
There was an awkward stand-off between them. Justin on the stairs, Amanda at the table. She spoke again, "What happened to your hand?"  
  
As if he'd hadn't noticed it before, Justin looked down at his hand. There was more blood than he remembered. He'd been gripping the glass shard in his hand. "Oh, nothing, just an accident." He said with a smile, heading towards the bathroom calmly, quickly. Amanda went to ask another question, but then he turned on the sink. He threw away the glass and shoved his hand under the water.   
  
Amanda came up behind him. He could see her in the mirror. She was looking at this hand, the blood, the glass. She was so worried. She was so upset. 

She hugged him, tight and warm. "I love you, Dad."  
  
Justin smiled. "I love you too, Amanda."


	2. Running

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Are you looking for a change or running away?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a second chapter? thanks i hate it

Four months later, Justin decided it was time to move. 

There wasn't any _immediate_ reason to, it was just for the better! It would be good for Amanda. After all, she  _had_ lived in the same neighborhood, attended the same school, and had the same friends for most of her life. So what if it was the summer before her senior year, a change would be good for her. People needed a change in order to prosper and grow --especially teenaged people who kept threatening to attend a college in Europe only because it allowed dogs.

It would be good for money, too. Even if his job paid the bills and still left plenty of spending money, keeping up with the maintenance of their -- _"_ Old? I guess it's old now." Justin thought as he lifted another box into the moving van-- house was becoming a hassle, and it was too big for only two people. Lots of empty rooms and open spaces. Maybe someone else would come along, someone who was more up to the task, and take good care of their house and turn the empty rooms into lovely, pink parlors with tiny tea tables like Alex always wanted.

_Alex._

Suddenly, he couldn't move. The name caught him by surprise. How long since he last thought about her? Weeks, months? Had he been too caught up in moving to let himself think about her?

 _Hah._ Alex and moving didn't belong in the same sentence. 

She would've hated moving.

She would've hated him _for_ moving. 

But it was for the best. After all, things are different now. This is for the best. 

He'd laid down on the couch at some point. Maybe he drifted there subconsciously like he usually did.  _"You always lay on the couch when you think,"_ Amanda would say, _"Sometimes, I think you'd drive all the way home just to lay on that couch and think."_ Then, she'd curl up next to him and fall asleep. Justin would always follow. 

"Dad." 

Speak of the Devil. There was Amanda now, nudging him awake. Justin groaned. "Go away, I'm dead." 

"Dead people don't talk, dad." 

"I'm a special kind of dead person. A talking dead person." 

There was a deep, heavy sigh and Justin sat up. He stretched-- the good kind where your bones pop and it feels like your body is thanking you for it-- and kissed Amanda on the nose. "Morning, bugaboo." He yawned and Amanda, like the charmer she was, recoiled in disgust. "Yuck. Dad breath. Go brush your teeth." 

**~~~**

The downstairs bathroom always had a strange energy.

They had an exorcist in there once, at Amanda's request, but it still felt weird. Not like a 'someone's watching you take the biggest dump of your life' weird, but just a very intimate, emotional kind. Amanda once said it was Alex lingering in the bathroom, making sure Justin remembered to take his morning medication like she used to. Of course, this was probably not the case because Alex forgot just as much as he did. But, he let her run with that anyways. 

Cold water would help wake him up for the long drive ahead. He couldn't brush his teeth again, sadly, because he'd packed up his toothbrush on accident and had no idea which box he'd put it in, and like  _Hell_ was he about to dig through every box in that God-forsaken van to find his toothbrush. So, Amanda would just have to suffer from his Dad Breath. 

 In the mirror, he started to inspect his face. A short, well-kept beard that was still a bit damp from the morning splash, a small bun to keep his hair out of his face, and only a few wrinkles to make him look 'tastefully aged'. Everything seemed to be in order, so why did he feel like he was forgetting something?

_Meds._

Oh right, his meds. Without those, he'd be a mess, and he couldn't just leave Amanda with all the unpacking. She'd guilt him about it for days, or worse--- make him eat at McFridayz as payment.

Even the name made him nauseous. 

So, he downed his pills, which he'd so graciously left for himself in the bathroom cabinet, and looked at himself in the mirror one last time.

He could've sworn he saw someone behind him. But maybe it was just a trick of his own exhausted head.

"Dad, the moving driver people are here-- are you ready to go?" Amanda called from somewhere in the house. Justin stared in the mirror for a minute longer, hoping to see the person again. They never showed. 

"Yeah, I'm ready. Let's go."

**~~~**

They'd been driving for a little over an hour now. Once they'd lost the moving van and another time Amanda had to pee so bad she almost cried, but otherwise, it was a pretty smooth trip so far. Amanda had taken to sitting the passenger seat, "I can help you drive better because you're blind." was her explanation, and was now digging through the cooler for a soda.  "So, sell me on our new house." She said, picking out a can of something orange and immediately putting it back. "Well, what do you want to hear about it?" 

Amanda tapped her finger on her chin, thinking. Justin was really expecting something like; "How close is the pizza place?" or "Do we live near that lady whose pie we stole off her windowsill when I was five?" But instead, she asked; "Do we have a washer and dryer this time?" 

"Why little lady, you're in luck!" Her eyes widened with such excitement Justin almost laughed, "No more of those awkward conversations at the dry cleaner's everytime you spill mustard on your bed because we now have our very own washer and dryer hook-ups! Isn't that something?" Amanda snorted. "As if that'll stop me from eating mustard sandwiches."  

They stopped talking a little after that. Sometimes they'd fight over the radio, because Justin didn't want to listen to a band whose name he couldn't pronounce for two hours but Amanda  _hated_ Abba, but after the third or fifth time they both agreed to just leave the radio off and called a truce. 

It was halfway through hour two when Amanda spoke again. "So... What's this place called?" She asked, "Tree ocean? Pine lake?"  Justin cursed under his breath when the moving van changed lanes again, "Maple bay, I think." He replied, more or less forcing his way into the next lane over.

An old woman behind him flipped him in the bird in his rearview. "I really hope she isn't heading that way, too." He mumbled, trying to keep his eyes on the van and the road infront of him and not the angry little old lady in Prius behind him.

"What's it look like?" Amanda asked again. "It's like a ranch house, but with a porch." Justin started to explain, almost missing his turn into the next exit, "It's blue, too. Y'know, like our old house. But not like, a dark blue. A baby blue, if you will." Amanda hummed in affirmation. "I like baby blue. Is that why you got the house? Because I like baby blue?"

Justin wasn't one to kill dreams. "Yes, because you like baby blue." Another hum came from Amanda, but softer this time. He looked over and she was asleep, probably dreaming of baby blue houses near a Pine Lake. Justin smiled and kissed her cheek.

In the process, he missed another turn. He was going to cry when he got to Maple Bay, _if_ he ever got to Maple Bay. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> why did i write a second chapter? where is this going? i have no idea but oh well

**Author's Note:**

> the title is a sick pun and i'm not even ashamed of it
> 
> http://blueberryjellyontoastplease.tumblr.com/


End file.
